This thesis is a study of the reform of health systems from an international and an economic perspective. Its main unifying theme is to investigate the role played by incentives in the performance of health systems and their reform. In the first part, the thesis reconsiders the economic reasons that form the basis for public intervention in health markets, both in financing as well as in service provision. In fact, one of the key elements introduced with health reforms in the last few years has been greater competition in health insurance and provision, among private as well as public providers. It is thus interesting to start the analysis by revisiting the effects of competition in health markets on the basis of more recent contributions in microeconomic theory, our aim being to ascertain what would be the major deficiencies of unregulated markets, and to investigate into the impact of different public corrective measures. Chapter 2 looks at the effects of competition in the health insurance market and at the impact of different forms of public intervention to correct market failures. Chapter 3 presents a model of oligopolistic competition between two health providers, and it investigates the potential role of quality and/or price regulation as a means to extend coverage/improve quality beyond the point reached in correspondence to the market equilibrium. Then, the thesis focuses on the new resource allocation, contracting mechanisms and payment systems for providers (RAP reforms) implemented over the last few years, within the public sector, or intended to discipline the relationship with health care providers. Chapters 4 gives an introduction to the RAP reforms, their justification and main components. Chapter 5 focuses on payment systems and on efficiency issues, while Chapter 6 on the equity consequences of RAP reforms. Chapter 7 and 8 look at the health reforms implemented over the last decade in the former socialist countries. The evolution of health systems in those countries provides interesting lessons, illuminating the major weaknesses and limitations of the health reform model that has been prevailing and proposed world-wide over the last decade. Chapter 8 presents a qualitative study of the impact of the health reforms in Georgia, focusing specifically on the phenomenon of out-of-pocket payments, formal and informal, which currently are the prevalent source of funding for health in the region. A concluding chapter (Chapter 9) summarises some of the main findings of the thesis.


High concentration rare earth doped, large mode area (LMA) step-index fibers, which feature a very high cladding absorption per unit length at the pump wavelength, high efficiency, and excellent beam quality, are ideal for high power pulsed fiber lasers/amplifiers where large effective mode areas and short device lengths are crucial in order to reduce detrimental nonlinear effects associated with high peak power operation. In this Letter, we realize low numerical aperture (NA) high absorption fibers, simply by employing a germanium (Ge)-doped cladding rather than a pure silica cladding to offset the high refractive index associated with using a high concentration of ytterbium (Yb) in the core. This approach allows us to separate the two inter-linked fiber design parameters of pump absorption and NA in a step-index fiber. Using a conventional modified chemical vapor deposition process combined with solution doping, a low NA (0.04), LMA (475µm2) silica fiber is fabricated with a cladding absorption value of >20dB/m, which is the highest value among LMA step-index fibers with NA<0.06 so far reported to the best of our knowledge. The fabricated Yb-doped fiber was tested in a high-power picosecond amplifier system and enabled the generation of 190 ps laser pulses with a 101 µJ pulse energy and 0.5 MW peak power at an average power of 150 W.


Inferences about introduction histories of invasive species remain challenging because of the stochastic demographic processes involved. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) can help to overcome these problems, but such method requires a prior understanding of population structure over the study area, necessitating the use of alternative methods and an intense sampling design. In this study, we made inferences about the worldwide invasion history of the ladybird Harmonia axyridis by various population genetics statistical methods, using a large set of sampling sites distributed over most of the species' native and invaded areas. We evaluated the complementarity of the statistical methods and the consequences of using different sets of site samples for ABC inferences. We found that the H. axyridis invasion has involved two bridgehead invasive populations in North America, which have served as the source populations for at least six independent introductions into other continents. We also identified several situations of genetic admixture between differentiated sources. Our results highlight the importance of coupling ABC methods with more traditional statistical approaches. We found that the choice of site samples could affect the conclusions of ABC analyses comparing possible scenarios. Approaches involving independent ABC analyses on several sample sets constitute a sensible solution, complementary to standard quality controls based on the analysis of pseudo‐observed data sets, to minimize erroneous conclusions. This study provides biologists without expertise in this area with detailed methodological and conceptual guidelines for making inferences about invasion routes when dealing with a large number of sampling sites and complex population genetic structures.


For most children the racial composition of their neighborhood determines the racial composition of their school. Segregated housing patterns translate into a highly segregated educational system, which can then result in disparities in educational opportunities and an institutionalized mechanism for the reproduction of racial inequality. To better understand the extent to which the racial composition of charter and magnet schools deviates from their neighborhood composition, we analyze public elementary schools in five California metropolitan. Our findings suggest that individual schools can expose children to a more racially integrated or segregated educational environment than their local neighborhood. Magnet schools, on average, provide students with a more integrated environment than the local neighborhood, while charter schools provide a more segregated environment.


In this research a considerable amount of scientific evidence had been collected which leads to the conclusion that the urban wastewater components should be designed as one integrated system, if the protection of the receiving waters is to be achieved cost-effectively. Even more, there is a need to optimize the design and operation of the sewerage network and wastewater treatment plant (WwTP) considering the dynamic interactions between them and the receiving waters. This book introduces a method named Model Based Design and Control (MoDeCo) for the optimum design and control of urban wastewater components. The book presents a detailed description of the integration of modelling tools for the sewer, the wastewater treatment plants and the rivers. The complex modelling structure used for the integrated model challenge previous applications of integrated modelling approaches presented in scientific literature. The combination of modelling tools and multi-objective evolutionary algorithms demonstrated in this book represent an excellent tool for designers and managers of urban wastewater infrastructure. This book also presents two alternatives to solve the computing demand of the optimization of integrated systems in practical applications: the use of surrogate modelling tools and the use of cloud computer infrastructure for parallel computing.


Kraft lignin (KL) dispersions in methoxy polyethylene glycol (MPEG) and in a mixture of palm kernel oil (PKO) with MPEG (PKO/MPEG) were evaluated for viscoelastic polyurethane foams (VPFs) production with different contents of KL (0-3.9 pphp) and PKO (0 -15 pphp). The influence of the dispersed KL on the foam structure, foam growth profile, foaming reactivity, mechanical properties, and final properties of VPFs were studied. The appearance of the VPF produced with KL dispersion in MPEG/PKO was similar to the control VPF foam. The addition of KL dispersion (0 to 15 pphp), had a significant effect on the growth profile, foaming reactivity, density and consequently on the foam morphology. VPFs produced with 3.9 pphp of KL presented shrinkage values about 4 times when compared to the control. The presence of the KL and PKO did not improve the burning rate of the foam samples compared to the control foam, without KL and PKO. Thermal stability of the produced foams showed no relevant differences regardless of the contents of KL/MPEG/PKO used in comparison to the control. Mechanical properties of VPF can be adjusted by making changes to the standard formulation. It can be concluded that the dispersion of KL in a mixture of MPEG and PKO represents an alternative for incorporating fractions of KL and PKO into VPF. In addition, this study provides new insights for the production of VPF using renewable resources for packaging applications, as well as in the mattress industry.


Two interrelated objectives are pursued in this article: the first concerns the relationship and interaction between the UK's company law and market-based regulation; the second explores the legitimacy of marketbased regulation in light of its potential to mould and influence the substantive law. Although the article finds that the two systems retain carefully defined, essentially consistent and mutually complementary roles, it submits that market-based formations run the risk of not readily or plausibly lending themselves to dominant political and democratic accounts, which are deployed customarily to substantiate the legitimacy of state interventionist techniques. Simultaneously, the deployment of a rival conception of legitimacy, conceived as technocratic expertise and market consensus and conformity, is problematic for a number of theoretical and practical reasons. This has implications for the effects and outcomes of the UK's company law and governance.


'MAXnotes' offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature, presented in a lively and interesting fashion. Written by literary experts who teach/have taught the subject, each book in the series will enhance your understanding and appreciation of the work.


Combining gridded ice motions with daily ice extent maps, it is possible to "track" the evolution of sea ice in the Arctic region. Classifying the ice by ice age, this evolution reveals that the area of the oldest (>4 years) ice is decreasing in the Arctic Basin and is being replaced by younger, first-year ice. As a result, the extent of the oldest ice retreats to a relatively small area north of the Canadian Archipelago, with narrow bands that spread out across the central Arctic. This new approach reinforces the work done by others showing the changes in the Arctic sea ice cover over the past two decades.


Five metal chelates of the type M [Jg] 2 where M = Zn, Cd, Hg, Sn and Pb and Jg = 5-hydroxy-1, 4-naphthoquinone (Juglone) have been synthesized. All chelates have been characterized by modern methods such as elemental analysis, FTIR, X- ray diffraction, Electronic spectra, Thermogravimetry, Differential thermal analysis and electron microscopy with EDAX analysis. All chelates are found to be colored. These chelates are thermally stable up to 500 o C and all are crystallite in nature and the crystallographic parameters are calculated, which shows that these crystals belong to triclinic. The particle size of Jg, Zn-Jg and Pb-Jg is 104, 52 and 39 nm, respectively. The ligand and the metal chelates have been screened for antimicrobial activity on Gram positive, Gram negative and antifungal activity and results are compared with standard cisplatin compound. The results are encouraging.


Serum immunoglobulin (Ig) levels were assayed in 672 patients admitted for acute myocardial infarction with onset within 24 hours of hospitalization. Supranormal Ig levels (A > or = 300, G > or = 1,200) or subnormal Ig levels (M < 40 mg/100 ml) were seen in patients with one or several risk factors (diabetes mellitus, alcohol abuse) or a history of previous myocardial infarction. Patients with one or more Ig anomalies were more likely to exhibit unfavorable outcomes, including early death, suggesting that increased viscosity due to aggregation of Ig molecules may occur.


Internet of Things (IoT) is a technology that is a daily necessity for humans. Unfortunately, so far, the IoT still disables privacy for various reasons. This circumstance has intrigued many researchers to conduct research related to IoT and privacy. A large amount of research on this topic causes new problems about the way to find the novelty from existing gaps. This research was conducted using Systematic Literature Review (SLR), which explains the answers for four Research Question (RQ), i.e., (1) What challenges did cause the privacy of the IoT exposed? (2) Apart from privacy, what did other aspects of security compromised? (3) What did attack the IoT which have been previously researched? State the name of the attack that occurred! And (4) What solutions were offered by previous researchers? This study uses the PRISMA statement as a reference so that this paper is transparent. This research uses ACM and science direct as a journal database. The results showed that the majority of articles answered the challenge about "Lack of security protocol" (RQ1); 61 of 88 papers marked confidentiality as a gap (RQ2); Side-channel attack was the most frequently discussed attacks (RQ4); and each researcher had the unique solution to solve the problem.


This work was designed to study the antimicrobial activity of Crotalaria bernieri Baill. (Fabaceae). Extracts from leaf, root, pod and seed using hexane, ethyl acetate and methanol were tested in vitro for their activity against 17 bacteria, 5 fungi (3 yeasts and 2 molds) using disc diffusion and micro dilution methods. At the concentration of 1 mg/disc, all the extracts exhibited antimicrobial activity depending on the plant part and the extraction method used. The most sensitive germs were Salmonella enteridis, Streptococcus pyogenes and Candida guilliermondii with inhibition zone diameter (IZD) of 11 mm, 15 mm and 13 mm respectively. Most of extracts showed, broad activity spectrum varying from one extract to another. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) and minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) of all extracts were recorded. Ten extracts displayed an excellent effect (MIC 1000 µg/ml). Leaf methanol extracts were the most efficient and Gram positive bacteria the most sensitive. All extracts had bactericidal (MBC/MIC ≤ 4) or fungicidal action (MFC/MIC ≤ 4) in certain microorganisms and bacteriostatic (MBC/MIC > 4) or fungistatic action (MFC/MIC > 4) in others. Antimicrobial activity might be due to tannins, polyphenols, steroids, triterpenes and flavonoids that were present in most of the plant organs, but alkaloids in leaf and pod and saponosides in root might also be involved. C. bernieri with the effectiveness of all its parts, the variety of its secondary metabolites, the great number of sensitive pathogen microorganisms and its ubiquity make this plant species an interesting source of antimicrobial agents.

 Key words: Crotalaria bernieri, antimicrobial activity, disc diffusion method, microdilution method, minimum inhibitory concentration, minimum bactericidal concentration, minimum fungicidal concentration.


PURPOSE
To assess the key variables used in research on nurse staffing and patient outcomes from the perspective of an international panel.

DESIGN
A Delphi survey (November 2005-February 2006) of a purposively-selected expert panel from 10 countries consisting of 24 researchers specializing in nurse staffing and quality of health care and 8 nurse administrators.

METHODS
Each participant was sent by e-mail an up-to-date review of all evidence related to 39 patient-outcome, 14 nurse-staffing and 31 background variables and asked to rate the importance/usefulness of each variable for research on nurse staffing and patient outcomes. In two subsequent rounds the group median, mode, frequencies, and earlier responses were sent to each respondent.

FINDINGS
Twenty-nine participants responded to the first round (90.6%), of whom 28 (87.5%) responded to the second round. The Delphi panel generated 7 patient-outcome, 2 nurse-staffing and 12 background variables in the first round, not well-investigated in previous research, to be added to the list. At the end of the second round the predefined level of consensus (85%) was reached for 32 patient outcomes, 10 nurse staffing measures and 29 background variables. The highest consensus levels regarding measure sensitivity to nurse staffing were found for nurse perceived quality of care, patient satisfaction and pain, and the lowest for renal failure, cardiac failure, and central nervous system complications. Nursing Hours per Patient Day received the highest consensus score as a valid measure of the number of nursing staff. As a skill mix variable the proportion of RNs to total nursing staff achieved the highest consensus level. Both age and comorbidities were rated as important background variables by all the respondents.

CONCLUSIONS
These results provide a snapshot of the state of the science on nurse-staffing and patient-outcomes research as of 2005. The results portray an area of nursing science in evolution and an understanding of the connections between human resource issues and healthcare quality based on both empirical findings and opinion.


Working memory processing is central for higher-order cognitive functions. Although the ability to access and extract working memory load has been proven feasible, the temporal resolution is low and cross-task generalization is poor. In this study, EEG oscillatory activity was recorded from sixteen healthy subjects while they performed two versions of the visual n-back task. Observed effects in the working memory-related EEG oscillatory activity, specifically in theta, alpha and low beta power, are significantly different in the two tasks (i.e. two categories of visual stimuli) and these differences are greatest after image onset. Furthermore, cross-task generalization can be obtained by concatenating both tasks and although similar performances are observed before and after image onset, this study highlights the complexity of working memory processing related to different categories of visual stimuli, particularly after image onset, that are crucial to understand, in order to interpret the extraction of working memory load.


The quality and accuracy of the data provided by cancer registries has a significant impact on decision making. Over decades, high-income countries have been successful in monitoring their cancer burden because of well-established data abstraction techniques such as digital systems. Conversely, in low- and middle-income countries, sparsely distributed cancer registries, using alternative less costly, but imprecise methods are struggling to capture all cancer cases. A population-based cancer registry in South Africa covering a resource-limited rural population is faced with challenges in case finding yet the quality and accuracy of the data provided has a significant impact on decision making. The objective of this study was to assess data quality using two data quality attributes 'completeness and accuracy' and also to determine the benefits of using active and passive case-finding methods for cancer registration in this population. Data used were collected between January 2014 and December 2015 from four hospitals to compare the quality of both active and passive case-finding methods. From all four hospitals during the same period, a first set of data obtained through passive reporting was compared with a second set of data obtained through active case finding. Covering multiple facilities during active case finding can significantly improve quality of data, while passive case finding is challenged by data collection being confined to one specific health facility, only. Better investment in active case finding is recommended in settings with resource-distribution disparities.


Abstract The PROFIL and PROFIL-2 experiments were carried out in the fast reactor PHENIX. They were designed to provide integral information on neutron cross sections [(n,γ), (n,2n), and (n,f)] of several fission products and actinides. Previous interpretations report integral results with unrealistic small uncertainties that only take into account the statistical contribution. This work presents an uncertainty propagation technique able to include systematic uncertainties due to neutron fluence scaling. Such a technique consists of marginalizing analytically the uncertainties of the nuclear data (nuisance parameters) involved in the fluence scaling procedure. For the capture cross sections of 235U, 238U, and 239Pu, the interpretation of the PROFIL and PROFIL-2 experiments with the international library JEFF-3.1.1 provides excellent  results equal to 1.000, 1.019, and 0.982, respectively, with a relative uncertainty close to 1.5% (1σ).


With the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifadat al-Aqsa in September 2000 that followed the failure of the Camp David II summit, the chain of belligerent events took Egypt by surprise. Facing a dilemma in its search for an appropriate policy towards the Palestinian-Israeli escalation, this study argues that Egypt's policy towards the second Intifada may best be understood by scrutinising several circles of reference that directly affected its policymaking process throughout the long years of the bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These circles of reference comprise interests and calculations derived from Egyptian internal issues; regional factors -- Egypt's role and position in the Arab world in general, and its relations with the Palestinians in particular; Egypt's relations with Israel; and its strategic ties with the United States. The growing strength and the expansion of the global Islamic terrorist network that challenges the stability of the present Arab regimes constitutes a lynchpin at every layer. Egypt's foreign policy is based on Realpolitik, that is, on pragmatic and material factors rather than on ideological or moral considerations. Safeguarding its national interests is Egypt's prime goal. In this regard, Egypt considers the peace with Israel as a strategic national asset. For Mubarak's regime, the abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel has never been an option, even during the worst days of the Intifada. Mubarak has shown exemplary restraint throughout the conflict. Despite occasional harsh anti-Israeli statements aimed mainly at easing internal and external pressures, Mubarak's regime can, on the whole, be seen as a responsible and stabilising factor vehemently striving to prevent regional escalation. This study is based primarily on Egyptian sources as well as interviews and conversations with senior members of the Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies. It also draws on other primary and secondary sources in Arabic, Hebrew and English. The book is essential reading for all scholars involved and engaged with the Israel-Arab conflict.


In this paper we describe a novel approach to the fabrication of optical waveguides by focused low-repetition-rate femtosecond laser pulses. This approach overcomes the main limitation of the technique, i.e. the strong asymmetry of the waveguide profile. By using an astigmatic beam and suitably controlling both beam waist and focal position in tangential and sagittal planes, it is possible to shape the focal volume in such a way as to obtain waveguides with a circular transverse profile and of the desired size. This technique is applied to the fabrication of active waveguides in Er:Yb-doped glass substrates. The waveguides are single-mode at 1.5 mm, exhibit propagation losses of about 0.25 dB/cm and an internal gain of 1.4 dB at 1534 nm.


Background Estrogen receptors alpha (ERα) and beta (ERβ) and the cooperating protein GATA-binding factor 3 (GATA3) have been implicated in bladder carcinogenesis and tumour progression. GATA3 and ER have been functionally linked in the establishment of luminal fate in breast tissue, but to date their relationship in bladder cancer has not been established. This information will be useful to advance diagnostic and prognostic markers. Aim To determine the relationship between the expression of ERα, ERβ and GATA3 in bladder cancer, disclose their prognostic and diagnostic value and their association with clinicopathological characteristics. Methods A comprehensive literature search in PubMed database was performed for all immunohistochemical studies of ERα, ERβ and/or GATA3 in bladder cancer patients. We selected eligible studies in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines and evaluated methodological quality and risk of bias based on quality criteria from the reporting recommendations for tumour MARKer (REMARK) prognostic studies. Risk of bias assessment was performed using Review Manager 5. R software was used for all statistical analysis, the packages used were meta and dmetar for the standard meta-analysis, and netmeta for the network meta-analysis. Results Thirteen studies were eligible for ERα, 5 for ERβ and 58 for GATA3 meta-analysis. Low grade tumours showed significantly lower ERα expression. GATA3 was widely expressed in bladder tumours, especially urothelial carcinomas, with higher expression of GATA3 in low grade and low stage tumours. Data was insufficient to determine the prognostic value of either ERα or ERβ, but GATA3-positivity was associated with higher recurrence free survival. A negative correlation between ERα or ERβ positivity and GATA3 expression was disclosed. Additionally, several sources of heterogeneity were identified, which can be used to improve future studies. Conclusion The clinicopathological value of ERα and ERβ was inconclusive due to low availability of studies using validated antibodies. Still, this meta-analysis supports GATA3 as good prognostic marker. On the contrary, ERα-positivity was associated to higher grade tumours; while ERα and ERβ were inversely correlated with GATA3 expression. Considering that it has previously been shown that bladder cancer cell lines have functional ERs, this suggests that ERα could be activated in less differentiated cells and independently of GATA3. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of ERα and ERβ expression in BlaCa supported by complete patient clinical history is required for the identification of BlaCa subtypes and subgroups of patients expressing ERα, to investigate if they could benefit from treatment with hormonal therapy. Systematic Review Registration Prospero, CRD42021226836.


There is now a general consensus among scientists on occurrences of more and intense climatic disasters, floods and droughts, everywhere in the future. To act sooner and smarter against these negative impacts, we must shift our focus in better understanding of the future climate change and possible implications of that to better manage our water resources. Certainly, there is a link between the future effects of climate change on water resources and trends of climatic variables. In this study, by using Mann-Kendall trend analysis method, it is concluded that from 1961 to 2010 only temperature has an upward trend, in all the seasons and yearly, in all the 16 studied stations from north, middle and south of Sweden. Furthermore, runoff simulated by HBV model shows increasing trend in summer and winter which is in partially agreement with the recorded one that discerns a growth in the mentioned seasons, as well as yearly. What is more, potential evapotranspiration estimated by FAO Penman-Monteith equation and actual one simulated by CoupModel reveal a rise in spring for the former and both spring and winter for the latter. Other meteorological variables do not show any significant trend, while intensive precipitation increased in winter and summer in the majority of the stations. Comparing the runoffs simulated by CoupModel and HBV model shows that HBV works better for three selected stations which can enforce the claim that HBV works better for smaller fields.


An acid-fast, slow-growing scotochromogenic mycobacterium was isolated from a medium specific for hydrogen-utilizing chemolithotrophs. The organism grew well in pure culture in simple mineral salts media under an atmosphere of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. No growth occurred in the absence of the gas mixture unless organic substrates were added. Four tested strains of the tap-water scotochromogen, Mycobacterium gordonae, were also able to grow autotrophically, whereas none of eight tested strains of M. scrofulaceum grew using hydrogen. Twenty-one other mycobacterial strains were negative for autotrophic growth; a strain of M. xenopi grew very slowly. The isolated scotochromogen conformed to the properties of M. scrofulaceum except for its ability to grow at 19 C and its autotrophic ability. This organism exhibited two major colony types. During autotrophic cultivation, a flat, rough colony form was dominant; heterotrophic cultivation caused a population shift to a smooth, domed variety. The two colony forms exhibited qualitatively similar biochemical properties, and the unusual rough-to-smooth transition seemed to correlate with the quantitatively enhanced heterotrophic growth capacities of the smooth strain. Rough-to-smooth variation was reversible, and predominantly smooth inocula gave rise to predominantly rough populations under conditions of chemoautotrophy. The ability to grow autotrophically may be a useful characteristic for distinguishing the saprophytic scotochromogens from the more pathogenic strains.


ABSTRACT With the growing amount of travel-related information available on the Internet and the increasing significance of search in the travel planning process, understanding travelers' search patterns can provide useful insights into developing systems that effectively address travelers' information needs. This study utilized phone inquiry records to examine the sequential characteristics of travel search. Information on attractions, accommodations, and events appears to be frequently searched in these queries; also, search sequences differ substantially by location level. The results of this study offer important implications for destination marketing with an emphasis on destination website development.


Rapid development of large scale logging and increasingly intensive petroleum exploration and development in northeastern Alberta prompted the establishment of a cooperative research program to investigate various aspects of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) biology. The ultimate goal of the program is to develop an effective plan that will ensure the long term survival of caribou while allowing for renewable and non-renewable resource development. There are three parts to the program. Part I began early in 1991 and makes use of conventional radio telemetry as a means of recording various parameters of general caribou biology. The study area encompasses approximately 4000 km2 of low relief, boreal mixedwood forest. Preliminary results from 2500 radio locations (involving 50 individuals) indicate that woodland caribou inhabiting the study area are non-migratory and are strongly associated with some of the more scarce peatland forest types present in the area. Investigations to document the basic biology and ecology will continue for another two years. Part II began in early 1993 as a part of a two-year investigation into the disturbance effects of petroleum exploration and development on caribou movements and behaviour. One objective of this study is to develop a predictive model useful in determining the cumulative effects of varying intensities of disturbance on caribou. Part III began in early 1994 with a proposed three-year investigation to determine the mechanism of spatial and temporal separation of caribou and moose in the study area. These relationships may indicate the means by which caribou minimize the impact of wolf predation on their populations in northeastern Alberta. Results will be applied to industrial land use and specifically to large scale forest harvesting planned for the area. The research program is supported through cooperative funding contributed by 24 petroleum companies, 1 forest company, 2 peat companies and the Alberta Departments of Environmental Protection and Energy. The research aspect of the program has been developed and implemented by staff of the University of Alberta, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, the Alberta Fish and Wildlife and Forest Services and the Alberta Environmental Centre. The program also incorporates a public information and liaison function. Newsletters, information videos, brochures and public consultation are the means used to accomplish this task.


Nurses and subordination: a historical study of mental nurses' perceptions on administering aversion therapy for 'sexual deviations' This study aimed to examine the meanings that nurses attached to the 'treatments' administered to cure 'sexual deviation' (SD) in the UK, 1935–1974. In the UK, homosexuality was considered a classifiable mental illness that could be 'cured' until 1992. Nurses were involved in administering painful and distressing treatments. The study is based on oral history interviews with fifteen nurses who had administered treatments to cure individuals of their SD. The interviews were transcribed for historical interpretation. Some nurses believed that their role was to passively follow any orders they had been given. Other nurses limited their culpability concerning administering these treatments by adopting dehumanising and objectifying language and by focussing on administrative tasks, rather than the human beings in need of their care. Meanwhile, some nurses genuinely believed that they were acting beneficently by administering these distinctly unpleasant treatments. It is envisaged that this study might act to reiterate the need for nurses to ensure their interventions have a sound evidence base and that they constantly reflect on the moral and value base of their practice and the influence that science and societal norms can have on changing views of what is considered 'acceptable practice'.


Power needs to be transferred from the source to the load (electric vehicle). Transmitting electricity through the air gap for charging using electromagnetic waves as one of the smart grid technologies called Wireless Power Transfer (WPT), or Inductive Power Transfer. This paper presents the fulfilment of future gird that addresses the issues of Greenhouse Gas emission, and transportation and industries emissions known as the smart grid with a complex system. The complexity of the smart grid communication system is the motivation to be an open area of research issue. The main contribution of this paper is to close the gap between this research and other researches by delivering a comprehensive review and update the recent state-of-the-art of smart grid communication technologies with the integration of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology using the contactless charging method. Smart grid communication technologies with their pros and cons, topologies of wireless communication, challenges of the V2G, WPT challenges, and standards are discussed. Therefore, this study is expected to be a significant guide to engineers and researchers studying in the field of smart grid communication technologies and contactless charging for electric vehicles. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license


In this paper, a new optimization problem is proposed to determine the maximum distributed generation (DG) penetration level by optimally selecting types, locations and sizes of utility owned DG units. The DG penetration level could be limited by harmonic distortion because of the nonlinear current injected by inverter-based DG units and also protection coordination constraints because of the variation in fault current caused by synchronous-based DG units. Hence the objective of the proposed problem is to maximize DG penetration level from both types of DG units, taking into account power balance constraints, bus voltage limits, total and individual harmonic distortion limits specified by the IEEE-519 standard, over-current relay operating time limits, and protection coordination constraints. The DG penetration study is formulated as a nonlinear programming (NLP) problem and tested on the IEEE-30 bus looped distribution network with ten load and DG scenarios. Similarly, feasibility assessment of customer owned DG unit installations considering power quality and protection coordination is also studied. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, which can serve as an efficient planning tool for utility operators.


A write-once (WO) optical disc memory with compact disc (CD) compatibility is demonstrated by using a multilayer consisting of a silver reflective layer, thin glass spacing layer, and silver quasi-island recording layer. The reflectance of the multilayer is >70% at a wavelength of 800 nm. The reflectance can be greatly lowered by laser irradiation, since the silver quasi-island layer changes by heating, becoming absorptive and of low reflectivity due to structural change. As a large reflectance change has been observed not only at 800 nm for CD but also at 650 nm for a digital video disc (DVD), a CD-DVD compatible wideband write-once optical disc is realised.


Rapid changes in information technology, the emergence of object-based and WWW applications, and the interest of organisations in securing benefits from new technologies have made information systems re-engineering in general and database migration in particular an active research area. In order to improve the functionality and performance of existing systems, the re-engineering process requires identifying and understanding all of the components of such systems. An underlying database is one of the most important component of information systems. A considerable body of data is stored in relational databases (RDBs), yet they have limitations to support complex structures and user-defined data types provided by relatively recent databases such as object-based and XML databases. Instead of throwing away the large amount of data stored in RDBs, it is more appropriate to enrich and convert such data to be used by new systems. Most researchers into the migration of RDBs into object-based/XML databases have concentrated on schema translation, accessing and publishing RDB data using newer technology, while few have paid attention to the conversion of data, and the preservation of data semantics, e.g., inheritance and integrity constraints. In addition, existing work does not appear to provide a solution for more than one target database. Thus, research on the migration of RDBs is not fully developed. We propose a solution that offers automatic migration of an RDB as a source into the recent database technologies as targets based on available standards such as ODMG 3.0, SQL4 and XML Schema. A canonical data model (CDM) is proposed to bridge the semantic gap between an RDB and the target databases. The CDM preserves and enhances the metadata of existing RDBs to fit in with the essential characteristics of the target databases. The adoption of standards is essential for increased portability, flexibility and constraints preservation. This thesis contributes a solution for migrating RDBs into object-based and XML databases. The solution takes an existing RDB as input, enriches its metadata representation with the required explicit semantics, and constructs an enhanced relational schema representation (RSR). Based on the RSR, a CDM is generated which is enriched with the RDB's constraints and data semantics that may not have been explicitly expressed in the RDB metadata. The CDM so obtained facilitates both schema translation and data conversion. We design sets of rules for translating the CDM into each of the three target schemas, and provide algorithms for converting RDB data into the target formats based on the CDM. A prototype of the solution has been implemented, which generates the three target databases. Experimental study has been conducted to evaluate the prototype. The experimental results show that the target schemas resulting from the prototype and those generated by existing manual mapping techniques were comparable. We have also shown that the source and target databases were equivalent, and demonstrated that the solution, conceptually and practically, is feasible, efficient and correct.


This paper presents clinical results from the use of monitor-nomad (MONIMAD), which is a reactive robotized interface for lower limb rehabilitation of patients suffering from cerebellar disease. The first problem to be addressed is the postural analysis of sit-to-stand motion. Experiments with healthy subjects were performed for this purpose. Analysis of external forces shows that sit-to-stand transfer can be subdivided into several phases: preacceleration, acceleration, start rising, and rising. Observation of center of pressure, ground forces, and horizontal components force on handles yields rules that identify the stability of the patient and adjust the robotic interface motion to the human voluntary movement. These rules are used in a fuzzy-based controller implementation. The controller is validated on experiments with diseased patients at Bellan Hospital, Paris, France.


Ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta rods containing 0.06, 0.46, and 0.68 wt.% oxygen were produced by vacuum arc melting and forging. These were solution treated (ST) and aged in the temperature range of 427–593°C for 8 h followed by air cooling. Increasing oxygen content increased the ST yield strength (YS) from 530 to 1081 MPa. The largest increase in YS, 630MPa, in ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta-0.06O observed after aging at 427°C was associated with ω phase precipitation. While the largest increases in YS, (1060 and 1288 MPa, in Ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta-0.46/0.68O) observed after aging at 482°C were associated with fine and somewhat inhomogeneous precipitation of the α phase, the tensile elongation remained above 8%. Aging at 538 or 593°C led to an increase in the inhomogeneity in α phase precipitation in Ti-35Nb-7Zr-5Ta-0.46/0.68O, precipitate free zones clearly being observed along with prior β grain boundaries, which served as preferred paths for early crack propagation and decreased tensile ductility.


Non-adherence occurs at any age, in all chronic diseases, and has a major impact on clinical outcomes. Non-adherence is primarily determined by perceptions of illness and medication beliefs. During puberty, adolescents attain independence from their parents and attach to their peers. This complicates successful self-management of chronic illness, because the adolescents avoid standing out from their peers. Discussion of barriers hindering successful self-management in adolescents can be promoted by seeing the patient alone, without the parents being present, and by acknowledging the patient's independence and responsibilities.


This paper seeks to explore the barriers women entrepreneurs encounter in developing countries. Extending beyond qualitative assessment, the paper explores the magnitude of cultural practices and other factor that impact on the development of female entrepreneurship. The paper reviews existing literature on women entrepreneurship, focusing on the major impediments that curtail women entrepreneurship in developing countries. The paper reports on empirical evidence drawn from the review of literature on women entrepreneurship. A total of 13 published articles were reviewed forming the basis of the paper. Evidence from the reviewed articles reveal that cultural practices in developing countries play a major role in driving women out of entrepreneurship and by extension curtailing on their development. Women in developing countries are disadvantaged by their lower levels of financial literacy and awareness. Access barriers to financial resources are significant. Women entrepreneurs are still to overcome key challenges like access to training in trade issues, operations management and marketing, as well as access to good mentors and mentorship programs. Based on the reviewed literature, practical implication for policy makers include; the pressing need to develop a legal framework to protect female entrepreneurship, capacity building programs for potential entrepreneurs, holistic training for potential women entrepreneurs and most importantly, a creation and provision of credit facility dedicated to women entrepreneurs.


Intraocular lenses (IOLs) provide distance and near refraction and are becoming the standard for cataract surgery. Multifocal glasses increase variability of toe clearance in older adults navigating stairs and increase fall risk; however, little is known about the biomechanics of stair navigation in individuals with multifocal IOLs. This study compared clearance while ascending and descending stairs in individuals with monofocal versus multifocal IOLs. Eight participants with multifocal IOLs (4 men, 4 women; mean age = 66.5 yr, standard deviation [SD] = 6.26) and fifteen male participants with monofocal IOLs (mean age = 69.9 yr, SD = 6.9) underwent vision and mobility testing. Motion analysis recorded kinematic and custom software-calculated clearances in three-dimensional space. No significant differences were found between groups on minimum clearance or variability. Clearance differed for ascending versus descending stairs: the first step onto the stair had the greatest toe clearance during ascent, whereas the final step to the floor had the greatest heel clearance during descent. This preliminary study indicates that multifocal IOLs have similar biomechanic characteristics to monofocal IOLs. Given that step characteristics are related to fall risk, we can tentatively speculate that multifocal IOLs may carry no additional fall risk.


Although in recent years an increasingly large body of mindfulness research has accrued, there continues to be a lack of information about how to measure trait mindfulness, as well as whether it varies across demographic variables such as age and gender. Four hundred and six participants from across New Zealand completed a battery of self-report measures in order to examine demographic differences in mindfulness, as well as to look at how mindfulness predicts outcome variables such as happiness and depression. Additionally, psychometric validation was undertaken on two new trait measures of mindfulness: the Toronto Mindfulness Scale, which did not demonstrate good psychometric validity, and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, which did demonstrate good psychometric validity. This study found that females reported higher levels of mindfulness than males, though males demonstrated a stronger mediating relationship between mindfulness and happiness. In addition, higher levels of mindfulness were reported by older individuals; however, young adults manifested the strongest negative relationship between mindfulness and depression across the lifespan. These findings are then discussed in the context of clinical utility and future research.


A urinary metabolite of rosaramicin in man was isolated and purified by a preparative HPLC method. On the basis of infrared, proton, and 13C magnetic resonance spectroscopic data, and elemental analysis, the metabolite has been identified as 20-bisureidorosaramicin. An authentic 20-bisureidorosaramicin was synthesized and shown to be identical to the urinary metabolite in infrared, 13C magnetic resonance spectral data and elemental analysis. In addition, fast atom bombardment mass spectral data of the metabolite was consistent with the structure of 20-bisureidorosaramicin. In mice receiving orally administered synthetic 20-bisureidorosaramicin, significant concentrations of rosaramicin were found in plasma, indicating the conversion of 20-bisureidorosaramicin to rosaramicin in this species.


Mutations in the leucine rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene are associated with familial and idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). The occurrence of common LRRK2 mutations is different among differing ethnic groups. The LRRK2 G2385R (c.7153G>R) and R1628P (c.4883G>C) mutations have been shown to be common risk factors for PD in East Asian populations while G2019S (c.6050G>A) is common in Europeans.1 2 Thailand is located in Southeast Asia, geographically close to China. Major Asian diasporas into mainland East Asia have taken place since the prehistoric period until mass Chinese emigration during the Chinese civil war and World War II.3 Thus it is likely that the Chinese and Thai populations may share some regional characteristic genotypes, including LRRK2 variants. These data led us to analyse the frequencies of the common LRRK2 R1628P, G2385R and G2019S mutations in our cohort of idiopathic PD patients.

We recruited 154 Thai patients with sporadic PD (males=56.5%, mean age of onset=61.2±9.8 years) and 156 control subjects over 65 years of age without any clinical features of parkinsonism. The research protocol was approved by the ethic committees from all participating hospitals. All patients provided informed consent.

The majority of the Thai population comprises indigenous Thai people and Chinese immigrants. To classify the ethnic groups of the population, we divided the cases into three groups: (1) Thai; (2) …


Adolescence covers 10-19 years of human age and is the transition period of life. The prevalence of Iron (Fe) deficiency in Nepal is around 23% population. High Fe content biofortied lines had developed to overwhelm the problem. This study was aimed to explore the effect of Genotype (G) and Genotype × Environment Interaction (GEI) on yield of 16 high Fe content lentil genotypes under four different environments (Nepalgunj, Banke, Dashrathpur, Surkhet, Parwanipur, Bara and Itahari, Sunsari). The research was conducted at the winter season cropping period of the year 2014 and 2015 following randomized complete block design with three replications in each location. Combined analysis of variance showed that there were highly significant differences in genotype and location but not genotype x environment interaction at 5% probability level, where G and GEI captured totally 87.4% of total variability. These four environments had good discriminative and representativeness for yield trait of high Fe content lines. Mean yield performances indicated that biofortifed lentil genotypes HUL-57, PL-4, RL-11 and LG-12 were the best performers across the environments over the years and stability of genotypes indicated that they were satisfactorily stable with high yield.


Defines four types of fuzzy neurons and proposes the structure of a four-layer feedforward fuzzy neural network (FNN) and its associated learning algorithm. The proposed four-layer FNN performs well when used to recognize shifted and distorted training patterns. When an input pattern is provided, the network first fuzzifies this pattern and then computes the similarities of this pattern to all of the learned patterns. The network then reaches a conclusion by selecting the learned pattern with the highest similarity and gives a nonfuzzy output. The 26 English alphabets and the 10 Arabic numerals, each represented by 16/spl times/16 pixels, were used as original training patterns. In the simulation experiments, the original 36 exemplar patterns were shifted in eight directions by 1 pixel (6.25% to 8.84%) and 2 pixels (12.5% to 17.68%). After the FNN has been trained by the 36 exemplar patterns, the FNN can recall all of the learned patterns with 100% recognition rate. It can also recognize patterns shifted by 1 pixel in eight directions with 100% recognition rate and patterns shifted by 2 pixels in eight directions with an average recognition rate of 92.01%. After the FNN has been trained by the 36 exemplar patterns and 72 shifted patterns, it can recognize patterns shifted by 1 pixel with 100% recognition rate and patterns shifted by 2 pixels with an average recognition rate of 98.61%. The authors have also tested the FNN with 10 kinds of distorted patterns for each of the 36 exemplars. The FNN can recognize all of the distorted patterns with 100% recognition rate. The proposed FNN can also be adapted for applications in some other pattern recognition problems. >


The determinants of House and Senate votes on congressional amendments to limit payments to farmers are investigated. One concern is that campaign contributions may influence politicians' votes. Lobbying activity, as attempts to distinguish ideological motivations from passive constituency pressures suffer from theoretical and empirical shortcomings. So-called ideologically based decisions may reflect the ideology of the congressman's constituents rather than independent action on the basis of exogenous beliefs, while this ideology may itself be determined by politicoeconomic factors. A simultaneous relationship between money and votes is found in the House, but not in the Senate.


Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (PCR-RAPD) analysis was used to estimate genetic variation within and between 6 Northeast Atlantic populations of Dover sole Solea solea (L.). A total of 16 fish were randomly selected from each population, and the results were compared with allozyme variation within and between populations. Results from both methods were in general agreement, but the RAPD technique detected higher levels of genetic variation. Contingency analy- ses (allele frequencies and hierarchical FST and non-hierarchical FDT) indicated highly significant genetic heterogeneity between populations. This result is consistent with the life history of Dover sole, which have homing behavior and discrete spawning grounds. Divergence between populations is indicated by cluster analyses of both allozymes and RAPD data. However, allozymes provided a somewhat better fit of data to predictions (higher values of cophenetic correlation of clusters from the goodness-of-fit statistics) and better correlation between genetic and geographical distances (Mantel's r). Both allozyme and RAPD data indicate that the samples can be clustered into two groups; continental Europe (Bay of Biscay and German Bight) and British Isles (Cumbria, Isle of Man, Ireland and North Sea). Despite the small geographical separation at the closest point, the English Channel may provide a barrier to gene flow between populations of Dover sole around the coasts of Britain and those on the coast of continental Europe.


Unrelated species often evolve similar phenotypic solutions to the same environmental problem, a phenomenon known as convergent evolution. But how do these common traits arise? We address this question from a physiological perspective by assessing how convergence of an elaborate gestural display in frogs (foot-flagging) is linked to changes in the androgenic hormone systems that underlie it. We show that the emergence of this rare display in unrelated anuran taxa is marked by a robust increase in the expression of androgen receptor (AR) messenger RNA in the musculature that actuates leg and foot movements, but we find no evidence of changes in the abundance of AR expression in these frogs' central nervous systems. Meanwhile, the magnitude of the evolutionary change in muscular AR and its association with the origin of foot-flagging differ among clades, suggesting that these variables evolve together in a mosaic fashion. Finally, while gestural displays do differ between species, variation in the complexity of a foot-flagging routine does not predict differences in muscular AR. Altogether, these findings suggest that androgen-muscle interactions provide a conduit for convergence in sexual display behavior, potentially providing a path of least resistance for the evolution of motor performance.


Background: Attempts to quantify effect sizes of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) to control COVID-19 in the US have not accounted for heterogeneity in social or environmental factors that may influence NPI effectiveness. This study quantifies national and sub-national effect sizes of NPIs during the early months of the pandemic in the US. Methods: Daily county-level COVID-19 cases and deaths during the first wave (January 2020 through phased removal of interventions) were obtained. County-level cases, doubling times, and death rates were compared to four increasingly restrictive NPI levels. Socio-demographic, climate and mobility factors were analyzed to explain and evaluate NPI heterogeneity, with mobility used to approximate NPI compliance. Analyses were conducted separately for the US and for each Census regions (Pacific, Mountain, east/West North Central, East/West South Central, South Atlantic, Middle Atlantic and New England). A stepped-wedge cluster-randomized trial analysis was used, leveraging the phased implementation of policies. Results: Aggressive (level 4) NPIs were associated with slower COVID-19 propagation, particularly in high compliance counties. Longer duration of level 4 NPIs was associated with lower case rates (log beta −0.028, 95% CI −0.04 to −0.02) and longer doubling times (log beta 0.02, 95% CI 0.01–0.03). Effects varied by Census region, for example, level 4 effects on doubling time in Pacific states were opposite to those in Middle Atlantic and New England states. NPI heterogeneity can be explained by differential timing of policy initiation and by variable socio-demographic county characteristics that predict compliance, particularly poverty and racial/ethnic population. Climate exhibits relatively consistent relationships across Census regions, for example, higher minimum temperature and specific humidity were associated with lower doubling times and higher death rates for this period of analysis in South Central, South Atlantic, Middle Atlantic, and New England states. Conclusion and Relevance: Heterogeneity exists in both the effectiveness of NPIs across US Census regions and policy compliance. This county-level variability indicates that control strategies are best designed at community-levels where policies can be tuned based on knowledge of local disparities and compliance with public health ordinances.


This paper is focused on the European development response to the refugee and migration crisis. European development aid was impacted by the refugee and migration crisis and appeared to be a tool to smooth the consequences of the crisis in Europe. The author conducted semi-structured interviews with scholars, policymakers and representatives of civil society and came to conclusion that the European Union (EU) and its members, instead of developing a strategic programme to resolve this structural issue, used a tactical solution to achieve the short-term goal of stopping migration. Short-term motivations prevailed over a long-term strategy and resulted in the politicization of development aid in policy papers: there was a significant change in the discourse regarding migration and development assistance. While EU members have indeed excessively used official development assistance (ODA) to host refugees in their countries, EU development programmes in African countries have been largely relabeled as "migration-related." So far there is no evidence-based research that redistribution of aid beneficiaries has taken place as a result of the policy to tackle the "root causes" of migration.This paper first outlines the European policy framework on development assistance which is aimed at migration management. Then it identifies the EU initiatives to mainstream migration into the development agenda, and considers members' use of ODA to cover domestic expenses for refugees and asylum seekers. The paper concludes by outlining the key concerns regarding instrumentalization of aid.


Urban flooding poses risks to the safety of drivers and pedestrians, and damages infrastructures and lifelines. It is important to accommodate cities and local agencies with enhanced rapid flood detection skills and tools to better understand how much flooding a region may experience at a certain period of time. This results in flood management orders being announced in a timely manner, allowing residents and drivers to preemptively avoid flooded areas. This research combines information received from ground observed data derived from road closure reports from the police department, with remotely sensed satellite imagery to develop and train machine-learning models for flood detection for the City of San Diego, CA, USA. For this purpose, flooding information are extracted from Sentinel 1 satellite imagery and fed into various supervised and unsupervised machine learning models, including Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Maximum Likelihood Classifier (MLC), to detect flooded pixels in images and evaluate the performance of these ML models. Moreover, a new unsupervised machine learning framework is developed which works based on the change detection (CD) approach and combines the Otsu algorithm, fuzzy rules, and iso-clustering methods for urban flood detection. Results from the performance evaluation of RF, SVM, MLC and CD models show 0.53, 0.85, 0.75 and 0.81 precision measures, 0.9, 0.85, 0.85 and 0.9 for recall values, 0.67, 0.85, 0.79 and 0.85 for the F1-score, and 0.69, 0.87, 0.83 and 0.87 for the accuracy measure, respectively, for each model. In conclusion, the new unsupervised flood image classification and detection method offers better performance with the least required data and computational time for enhanced rapid flood mapping. This systematic approach will be potentially useful for other cities at risk of urban flooding, and hopefully for detecting nuisance floods, by using satellite images and reducing the flood risk of transportation design and urban infrastructure planning.


The purpose of this study is to identify the disease on citrus leaves. A digital imagery makes it possible to identify disease automatically. Three diseases to be identified in this research are CVPD (Citrus Vein Phloem Degeneration), Downy Mildew, and Cendawan Jelaga. The research will study the implementation of an image segmentation to analyze the citrus leaves diseases. The method that will be used to do image segmentation is K-Means. The segmentation which will be carried out consist of two kinds, namely a leaf segmentation and a disease segmentation. After segmentation process, the results of disease segmentation are classified by using the K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN) algorithm to know its disease class. From data analysis, the results of the optimal cluster shows that the leaf segmentation consist of 2 clusters and the disease segmentation consist of 9 clusters. While the obtained optimal parameter K gives score of 4. The accuracy percentage for disease identification in this study is 90.83%. Furthermore, the analysis states that the accuracy can be more increased by using a minimum bound parameters. Finally, overall the results show the optimal value at the minimum bound of 3%, its accuracy can be increased to 99.17%.


A redshift survey has been carried out in the region of the Hubble Deep Field North using the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (LRIS) at the Keck Observatory. The resulting redshift catalog, which contains 671 entries, is a compendium of our own data together with published LRIS/Keck data. It is more than 92% complete for objects, irrespective of morphology, to R = 24 mag in the HDF itself and to R = 23 mag in the flanking fields within a diameter of 8' centered on the HDF, an unusually high completion for a magnitude-limited survey performed with a large telescope. A median redshift z = 1.0 is reached at R ~ 23.8. Strong peaks in the redshift distribution, which arise when a group or poor cluster of galaxies intersect the area surveyed, can be identified to z ~ 1.2 in this data set. More than 68% of the galaxies are members of these redshift peaks. In a few cases, closely spaced peaks in z can be resolved into separate groups of galaxies that can be distinguished in both velocity and location on the sky. The radial separation of these peaks in the pencil-beam survey is consistent with a characteristic length scale for the their separation of ≈70 Mpc in our adopted cosmology (h = 0.6, ΩM = 0.3, Λ = 0). Strong galaxy clustering is in evidence at all epochs back to z ≤ 1.1. A near-infrared selected sample with K < 20 was also constructed in this field. Extremely red objects with R-K > 5.0 comprise 7% of the total K-selected sample. This fraction rises rapidly toward fainter K magnitude, reaching about 10% at K ~ 19.7. We have attempted to identify the radio sources in the region of the HDF. The secure radio sources seem to divide into two classes. The first have reasonably bright galaxies at moderate redshifts as optical counterparts, while the second, comprising about of the total, have extremely faint optical counterparts (R ≥ 25 mag). These do not represent a continuous extrapolation in any property (z or dust content) of the first group. We identify ~ of the secure mid-IR sources in the region of the HDF with normal galaxies with z < 1.3. The ratio of the mid-IR to optical flux increases as z increases, but this is due primarily to selection effects, and the same trend is seen in the radio sources. We suggest that the mid-IR emission is more tightly coupled to the rate of ongoing star formation than is the radio emission. We also demonstrate that the best photometric redshift techniques are capable of reaching a precision of σ[(zphot - zspec)/(1 + zspec)] = 0.05 for the majority of galaxies with z < 1.3. The two broad-lined AGNs with z < 3 are the brightest objects in the redshift peak at z ~ 0.96.


In the Western population cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of mortality and morbidity. There are several important risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, among them hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes and obesity. The clustering of cardiovascular risk factors associated with central obesity is often referred to as the metabolic syndrome. Due to different visions regarding the definitions, the underlying pathophysiology and the clinical usefulness, the metabolic syndrome attracts much attention of clinical research and clinicians. It has been shown that in apparently healthy individuals the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome is 20-25%, and the coming years the prevalence is expected to increase due to an increased prevalence of obesity. The metabolic syndrome is associated with a 2 to 3 fold increased risk for the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. In this thesis it is shown that in patients with manifest vascular disease the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome is nearly 50%. We also conclude that in patients with already manifest vascular diseases, the metabolic syndrome is associated with more advanced vascular damage as measured by indicators for increased (cardio)vascular risk. Adiponectin, produced by adipocytes, is involved in glucose metabolism and also has direct anti-atherogenic properties. The relationship between adiponectin and the metabolic syndrome and several estimates of obesity was demonstrated in patients with coronary artery disease in this thesis. Elevated iron stores are associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus and the metabolic syndrome, but the mechanistic link is not clear yet. Adipose tissue could be involved in the development of insulin resistance by the changed production of adipokines, so it could be hypothesized that elevated iron concentrations are involved in the development of the metabolic syndrome by interfering in adipocyte function. We indeed demonstrate that body iron stores, as reflected by ferritin levels, are significantly associated with the metabolic syndrome and adipocyte dysfunction, as measured by decreased adiponectin levels. The presence of coronary collaterals may have beneficial effects during myocardial ischemia and may improve cardiovascular outcome in patients with coronary artery disease. Impaired collateral formation could be one of the reasons for the increased cardiovascular risk in patients with the metabolic syndrome. However, we show that there is no significant association between the metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance and the presence of coronary collaterals in patients with documented coronary artery disease. Furthermore, we show that in patients with the metabolic syndrome combination therapy of low-dose simvastatin and ezetimibe preserves postprandial endothelial function contrary to high dose simvastatin monotherapy, whereas the same reduction in (fasting) plasma LDL-cholesterol is obtained after 6 weeks treatment. We also find that allowance for the use of lipid-lowering drugs in the NCEP-definition may identify an additional group of patients at elevated risk for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes and that the NCEP and IDF definitions identify metabolic syndrome patients with different cardiovascular risk profiles.


BACKGROUND
In postmenopausal women, significant changes occur that can induce cardiovascular diseases, such as atherogenic lipid profile, due to an increase in total cholesterol and LDL levels, and a decrease in HDL cholesterol levels. The hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can prevent these changes in lipid profile.

OBJECTIVE
Verify the effects of HRT consisting of transdermal estradiol gel associated with medroxyprogesterone acetate on the lipid profile and biochemical parameters in Brazilian postmenopausal women.

METHODS
This study is an open prospective longitudinal study, in which thirty postmenopausal women received transdermal estradiol gel (1 mg/day) continuously combined with oral medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) (5 mg/day) for 12 days/month. The following parameters were determined: total cholesterol, triglycerides, high density lipoprotein (HDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL), very low density lipoprotein (VLDL), glucose, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), gama glutamyl transferase (GGT) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH).

RESULTS
The parameters of the lipid profile did not show a significant decrease, while the levels of GGT and FSH had a statistically significant decrease.

CONCLUSIONS
the treatment with transdermal estradiol gel did not have a significant impact on the lipid profile, thus not resulting in a beneficial effect on cardiovascular disease markers, suggesting that the dose, administration route and the time of treatment were important for these results. Moreover, the treatment using small dose and the transdermal administration route also had a significant hepatic effect in this population. Therefore, this treatment might provide interesting effects on the lipid profile in Brazilian postmenopausal women.


The Weglowka oil field is located in the outer Carpathians. The outer Carpathians are a region where hydrocarbons were discovered and exploited at the end of the nineteenth century in several dozen oil fields, which are relatively small. The Weglowka oil field is one of the largest in this region. In the 150 yr or so of hydrocarbon exploration in the area, more than 1 million t (>1,237,000 tons [>8,841,000 bbl]) of oil have been produced. Hydrocarbons are concentrated in Lower Cretaceous sandstones (Grodziszcze and Lgota sandstones) that form an anticline sealed by Upper Cretaceous marls called the Weglowka marls. These cap rocks are up to 600 m (2000 ft) thick. Because of the thrust-related exhumation, they were exposed at the surface and represent the youngest deposits in the region. The present work is focused on a detailed petrographic characterization of the Weglowka marls. This study allows petroleum geologists to better understand the evolution of porosity in these cap rocks and can serve as a foundation for the prediction of their sealing properties. The marls appear as a succession of interbedded red and green varieties, which occur in up to 2-m (6-ft)-thick beds. These beds are nonarenaceous, soft, and bioturbated. Grain size corresponds to approximately 80% clay and less than 20% silt fractions. X-ray diffraction (XRD) reveals that the marls contain, on average, 54% clay, 28% calcite, 16% quartz, up to 3% feldspars and, in red marls, 3% hematite. The XRD patterns of clay are typical of mixed-layer illite–smectite ([I–S]; 40% illite in I–S). The clay structures are dioctahedral with similar octahedral Mg and relatively high Fe3+ contents both in the red and green intervals. As revealed by standard petrography combined with high-resolution petrography performed through the use of a field emission scanning electron microscope, the marls have mudstone textures according to Dunham's (1962) classification and are mostly composed of coccoliths and clay with rare nanoquartz. This rock may be considered an impure chalk. Sealing properties of the Weglowka marls are indicated by the specific surface area, porosity, pore size, and permeability, calculated using N2 gas adsorption, helium, and mercury porosimetry. The sealing potential is postulated to result from a combination of the following: (1) origin of components (i.e., deposition of minute calcareous bioclasts and volcanic material as a source for clay); (2) oxygenated sedimentary environment (as a result of the presence of oxygen in the sediments, burrowing caused the rocks to be homogenized); and (3) tectonic-induced clogging of pore space because of reorganization of clay flakes (the rocks were strongly tectonically deformed, which resulted in reduction of porosity in clay aggregates).


Advances in reproductive technology now afford options for certain cancer patients that the oncologist must consider when planning treatment. For men undergoing treatment likely to destroy testicular function, the development of sperm banks to store cryopreserved sperm offers the hope of future fatherhood. Cryopreserved sperm can be held indefinitely, with pregnancies via artificial insemination reported up to 15 years after freezing. For female cancer patients who will lose ovarian function but likely retain a viable womb, in vitro fertilization techniques hold the promise of pregnancy with the use of donated ova. In some cases, it may even be possible to extract the woman's own eggs before surgery and fertilize them with her husband's sperm. The resulting embryos, like sperm, can be frozen for indefinite future use. In the future, with new technological advances, extraction of ova for freezing at the time of ovarian extirpation may be a possibility.


Many previous researchers have shown design to be essentially the process of negotiating and resolving constraints. This has lead to a multitude of different design methods and approaches purely based on constraints; much of this work has concentrated on the late conceptual and embodiment phases of the design activity. The work presented in this paper has shown initial investigations into expanding these approaches to the earliest stages of the conceptual phase. The research has reviewed previous academic work, and the current approaches and understanding of designers working in the automotive domain. The findings of this research are presented and analysis given.


There is an increasing need to move to automated, computer-driven detection software to measure mouse behavior. In a prior study, we identified a method for marking and identifying multiple mice for tracking in the Reciprocal Social Interaction (RSI) task by placing a powder-based pigment (i.e. Hair Chalk) on the backs of each mouse. While this approach successfully maintained tracking using Ethovision XT software, it remains unknown whether this method interferes with species-typical behaviors. Specifically, the application method, sensation of the powder, and scent of the Hair Chalk may be variables disrupting social or anxiety-like behaviors. To test this, mice were placed through three behavioral tasks to measure scent motivation, grooming behavior and anxiety levels in response to the presence of Hair Chalk. Results indicate no differences in all behaviors measured, suggesting that this marking system is not interfering with species typical behavior.


SUMMARY
Objective: this research aimed at studying out the situation of the teaching of Geriatric Dentistry in the north-northeast regions of Brazil. Material and methods: the research universe was comprised of the 18 colleges of both regions that are listed with INESP/2001. This list was adopted as a way to make sure that only and indeed about-to-graduate students or those of last period of the course would take part in the research. To calculate the (randomly stratified) sample, we adopted a confidence interval of 95% and a maximal admissible error of 5%. We elaborated two questionnaires to collect the data, each one with a number of questions going from 8 to 14, either of the closed type or mixed. Pearson's X2 test was applied for inferential analysis as an aim to check the existence of a relationship among the dependent and independent variables established for the study. Out of the 17 Dentistry courses researched, only 06 keeps the teaching of Dentistry in the syllabus. Out of the 419 students who participated in the research, 41.8% pursued the knowledge outside college – most of them in congresses. 23.6% would rather work with elders. 98.8% understand it would be important to have the subject included in the syllabus. The was significance (p,0.05) between the student's preference of working with elders and his participation in buccal health action. Conclusions: As a subject or content, Geriatric Dentistry is not present to the syllabus of two thirds of the researched Dentistry courses. Its knowledge is usually made available in Dental Prosthesis. For an expressive parcel of students, no technical-practical formation was offered by the course. And for most of them, the preference to act as a professional finds support in adult assisting. The number of about-to-graduate students willing to get involved in this area is rather expressive.

DESCRIPTORS
Geriatric Dentistry. Dental syllabus. Teaching. Elder.


Abstract Objective To analyse the effects of a three-month course of progestogen-only contraception with desogestrel 75 μg on disability, headache frequency and headache intensity in migraineurs. Materials and methods Migraine disability headache questionnaires (MIDAS) were collected from 37 migraineurs during counselling, and at the end of three months treatment with desogestrel. Another ten women initiated but did not complete treatment. They are included in the overall evaluations of the effect of the regimen on migraine status. Results Desogestrel was associated with significant reductions in headache days and intensity (p < 0.001; p < 0.006), and a significant improvement in quality of life. Days missed at work and days missing leisure activities diminished (p < 0.001; p < 0.001). The MIDAS migraine disability score improved significantly (from 27.4 to 11.1 points) (p < 0.001). While 25 of the 37 women (68%) experienced a decrease of at least one grade, this level of benefit cannot be extrapolated to all initiators. When dropouts are considered, MIDAS grades decrease in 53% (25/47) of the cases. Conclusion The majority of migraineurs experienced a clinically significant reduction in headache frequency and improvement of quality of life with use of desogestrel. Prospective randomised controlled trials are needed to substantiate our results.


This memo defines two Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) reply
codes, 521 and 556. The 521 code was originally described in an
Experimental RFC in 1995 and is in wide use, but has not previously
been formally incorporated into SMTP. The 556 code was created to
support the new tests and actions specified in RFC 7505. These codes
are used to indicate that an Internet host does not accept incoming
mail at all. This specification is not applicable when the host
sometimes accepts mail but may reject particular messages, or even all
messages, under specific circumstances.


Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain size changes in insular mammals, but no single variable suffices to explain the diversity of responses, particularly within Rodentia. Here in a data set on insular rodents, we observe strong consistency in the direction of size change within islands and within species but (outside of Heteromyidae) little consistency at broader taxonomic scales. Using traits of islands and of species in a classification tree analysis, we find the most important factor predicting direction of change to be mainland body mass (large rodents decrease, small ones increase); other variables (island climate, number of rodent species, and area) were significant, although their roles as revealed by the classification tree were context dependent. Ecological interactions appear relatively uninformative, and on any given island, the largest and smallest rodent species converged or diverged in size with equal frequency. Our approach provides a promising framework for continuing examination of insular body size evolution.


On 11 November 2010, the European Parliament approved the Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFM) Directive, which enters into force next year. Among the more controversial aspects of this piece of legislation are the rules applicable to third country managers and funds. This Commentary attempts to present the third country rules in an accessible manner for non-specialists and to critically discuss these rules. An Annex is provided to guide the reader through the numerous provisions and the different phases that will follow after the Directive enters into force. The author argues that while the principles outlined initially by the Commission have prevailed, there are two issues that cause concern: On the one hand, there is no fixed date for the entry into force of the passport for non-EU managers, which sends the wrong signal to the industry, part of which still hopes to avoid compliance. On the other hand, the lack of trust among member states has brought unnecessarily complex provisions, which can act as a barrier to investments that would otherwise benefit the European economy. The author concludes that, while the rules have gained in flexibility, regulatory certainty and efficiency have suffered.


Home health care nurses are facing the ethical dilemma of discontinuing care to nonpaying needy patients or facing agency economic demise. Nurses perceive discontinuing care under such circumstances as patient abandonment. Ethical analysis of the dilemma yields two conclusions: (1) discontinuing care under non-life-threatening circumstances is not abandonment and does not violate the duty of beneficence, and (2) nurses do have an obligation to inform society of such instances so that public policy decision makers can be armed with that information when making allocation decisions.


Composed between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, these virtually unknown erotic and satiric poems lie at the root of the Western comic tradition. Passed down by the anticlerical middle classes of medieval France, The Fabliaux depicts priapic priests, randy wives, and their cuckolded husbands in tales that are shocking even by today's standards. Chaucer and Boccaccio borrowed heavily from these riotous tales, which were the wit of the common man rebelling against the aristocracy and Church in matters of food, money, and sex. Containing 69 poems with a parallel Old French text, The Fabliaux comes to life in a way that has never been done in nearly eight hundred years.


Coevolution is a natural choice for learning in problem domains where one agent's behavior is directly related to the behavior of other agents. However, there is a known tendency for coevolution to produce mediocre solutions. One of the main reasons for this is cycling, caused by intransitivities among a set of players. In this paper, we explore the link between coevolution and games, and revisit some of the coevolutionary literature in a games and measurement context. We propose a set of measurements to identify cycling in a population and a new algorithm that tries to minimize cycling in strictly competitive (zero sum) games. We experimentally verify our approach by evolving weighted piece counter value functions to play othello, a classic two-player perfect information board game. Our method is able to find extremely strong value functions of this type.


We study the precise mechanisms which allow autoencoders to encode and decode a simple geometric shape, the disk. In this carefully controlled setting, we are able to describe the specific form of the optimal solution to the minimisation problem of the training step. We show that the autoencoder indeed approximates this solution during training. Secondly, we identify a clear failure in the generali-sation capacity of the autoencoder, namely its inability to interpolate data. Finally, we explore several regularisation schemes to resolve the generalisation problem. Given the great attention that has been recently given to the generative capacity of neural networks, we believe that studying in depth simple geometric cases sheds some light on the generation process and can provide a minimal requirement experimental setup for more complex architectures.


The article reports and discusses a long-term qualitative study of forty 8–10-year-old students who regularly played a math game during math lessons for 9 weeks. The goal was to explore the relations between (i) some of the pedagogical principles that underlie the game and (ii) the playing practice in terms of what actually takes place when students play the math game during regular math lessons. The article discusses indications of matches and mismatches between pedagogical principles and playing practice as they appear in analyses of observations and video recordings. The result highlights the difficulty of predicting areas in which possible mismatches appear between the intentions of the pedagogues and designers of educational technology and the actual use of the technology by the students. This also applies to educational materials that have already been pilot tested and used on a smaller scale.We emphasize the need to observe actual use for extensive periods of time, i.e. to go beyond short-time user testing. (Less)


This book looks into four areas of our world's international security crisis: the growing threat of America's homegrown jihadists, the continuing rise of terrorism, the causes of gross violations of human rights, and the pervasiveness of civil war.
 When American jihadists join such international terrorist organizations as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Al Qaeda, the danger to security and stability is often magnified on both global and domestic fronts. The global rise of terrorism in turn causes a deterioration in the quality of human rights for politically disadvantaged people or minority groups within a national territory; meanwhile, the internal crisis created by terrorist violence and human rights violations can expedite the development of civil war, which is likely to endanger domestic and international stability.
 Taking a consistent theoretical and empirical approach, Emerging Security Challenges: American Jihad, Terrorism, Civil War, and Human Rights explicates the relationships among these four closely related areas of concern for national security. Each chapter presents systematic, empirical evidence of security trends for more than 100 sample countries, determined using the most current statistical methods. Given that security studies should provide practical policy recommendations, this book also offers potentially effective policy suggestions at the end of each chapter.
 • Examines four closely related security issues
 • Employs a systematic, empirical approach
 • Supports analysis with data
 • Makes feasible policy recommendations pertaining to growing security threats


Strong epidemiological evidence links prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution and outcomes including low birth weight, intrauterine growth restriction, and preterm birth.1,2 A new study finds evidence that the association between prenatal air pollution exposure and reduced birth weight may be mediated in part by a decline in the mitochondrial content of the placenta.3

During pregnancy, the placenta supports the nourishment, growth, and development of the fetus, and mitochondria within the cells of the placenta are essential to these processes.4 Mitochondria, the cellular organelles that regulate energy production, are easily damaged by reactive oxygen species generated by oxidative stress. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is inherently more vulnerable to oxidative stress than nuclear DNA because it lacks protective and repair mechanisms.4 Such damage could ultimately lead to diminished numbers of mitochondria and impaired energy flow, which would undermine cellular functions.5

Low birth weight, intrauterine growth restriction, and preterm birth are all strongly associated with exposure to air pollution. A reduction in placental levels of mitochondrial DNA could help explain why.

Air pollution is known to induce oxidative stress; thus, it could adversely affect placental mitochondria and thereby impair the ability of the placenta to support the growing fetus.3,5 A potential consequence of placental impairment is low birth weight, which in turn is associated with other detrimental health outcomes in children, both short- and long-term.2

The current study draws on data collected through two independent birth cohort studies conducted in Europe: Infancia y Medio Ambiente (INMA) in Spain, and Environmental Influence on Ageing (ENVIRONAGE) in Belgium. Demographic data and information on smoking status, residence location, and pre-pregnancy body mass index were obtained for all participants, and birth records were used to gather information on newborns' sex, birth weight, gestational age, and delivery. For one-quarter of the INMA participants and all ENVIRONAGE participants, placentas were collected at birth, and their nuclear DNA and mtDNA content was measured.

Ambient air pollution exposure for both cohorts was represented by nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations. Exposures were averaged for each trimester and for the whole pregnancy.

The current statistical analyses focused on 376 INMA participants and 550 ENVIRONAGE participants. The researchers found that prenatal NO2 exposures overall and for each trimester were inversely associated with both placental mtDNA content and birth weight. Specifically, each 10-μg/m3 increase in NO2 over the course of pregnancy was associated with an average 48-g reduction in birth weight across both cohorts.3

The association between NO2 and birth weight was stronger in the INMA cohort than in the ENVIRONAGE cohort (an average 66-g versus 20-g reduction), which could be explained by differences in factors such as exposure assessment methods, population characteristics, and study design.3 For instance, for the INMA cohort, NO2 was measured by outdoor passive samplers distributed throughout the study areas, with land use regression models accounting for residential location. The NO2 exposure estimates in the ENVIRONAGE cohort depended on residential address, satellite data, and a dispersion model that incorporated ground-based data.

Prenatal NO2 exposures were also inversely associated with placental mtDNA content, and placental mtDNA and birth weight were positively correlated. Based on these results, the authors concluded that placental mtDNA content may mediate the relationship between prenatal NO2 exposure and birth weight.3

"We saw very clearly that the mtDNA was indeed related to birth weight," says lead investigator Tim Nawrot, an assistant professor of environmental epidemiology at Hasselt University in Belgium. "Babies with a lower mtDNA content in the placenta showed a lower birth weight in both cohorts." The authors point to the lack of data on indoor air exposures—which also have been associated with changes in birth weight—as a limitation of the study.

"Overall, I see this study as an important piece of the puzzle as far as the weight of evidence on air pollution and pregnancy outcomes," says David Stieb, a public health physician and epidemiologist at Health Canada, who was not involved in the study. "There have been dozens of epidemiological studies looking at these associations, and there does seem to be a fairly consistent signal now, especially for air pollution and reduced birth weight." With limited evidence for the mechanisms that could explain that association, "this study could definitely help fill the gap," says Stieb.

The results will need to be confirmed through further epidemiological investigations, long-term prospective studies, and experimental research. "We will certainly look at whether the mitochondrial function in the placenta is related to future aspects of development," says Nawrot. "What we want to establish is whether the mitochondrial-related weight reduction in early life is related to disease development later in life."


Acute gastric dilatation due to superior mesenteric artery syndrome in healthy individuals is extremely rare. A 17-year-old girl who complained of epigastric pain for two days following excessive eating was admitted to our hospital. She was nauseated but was unable to vomit. Succussion splash was positive. Bedside ultrasonography revealed a hyperactive duodenum, a distended stomach compressing on the inferior vena cava and a narrowed angle between the superior mesenteric artery (SMA) and the aorta. Abdominal computed tomography imaging confirmed the above findings. The angle between the aorta and SMA was only eight degrees. Gastrograffin follow-through showed complete obstruction of the third part of the duodenum. 3,500 ml of fluid was immediately drained through the nasogastric tube. Another gastrograffin study conducted five days later showed normal results. Bedside ultrasonography thus proved to be useful for both the diagnosis and management of superior mesenteric artery syndrome.


BACKGROUND
Clinical observations have shown that the complex fractionated atrial electrogram (CFAE) associates with ganglionated plexus activity in the cardiac autonomic nervous system. This study aimed to investigate the impact of CFAE ablation on vagal modulation to atria and vulnerability to develop atrial fibrillation (AF).

METHODS
Ten adult mongrel dogs were involved. Cervical sympathovagal trunks were decentralized and sympathetic effects were blocked. CFAE was color tagged on the atrial 3-dimensional image and ablated during AF induced by S1S2 programmed stimulation plus sympathovagal trunk stimulation. Atrial effective refractory period (ERP) and vulnerability window (VW) of AF were measured on baseline and at vagal stimulation at 4 atrium sites. Serial tissue sections from ablative and control specimens received hematoxylin and eosin staining for microscopic examination.

RESULTS
Most CFAE areas were localized at the right superior pulmonary quadrant, distal coronary sinus (CS(d)) quadrant, and proximal coronary sinus (CS(p)) quadrant (21.74%, separately). Sinus rhythm cycle length (SCL) shortening did not decrease significantly after ablation at the sites, including right atrial appendage, left atrial appendage, CS(d), and CS(p) (P > 0.05). ERP shortening during vagal stimulation significantly decreased after ablation (P < 0.01); the VW to vagal stimulation significantly decreased after ablation (P < 0.05). The architecture of individual ganglia altered after ablation.

CONCLUSIONS
CFAE has an autonomic basis in dogs. The decreased SCL and ERP shortening to vagal stimulation after CFAE ablation demonstrate that CFAE ablation attenuates vagal modulation to the atria, thereby suppressing AF mediated by enhanced vagal activity. CFAE ablation could suppress AF mediated by enhanced vagal activity.


This paper provides a general purpose search-based technique for computing posterior probabilities in arbitrary discrete Bayesian Networks. This is an ``anytime'''' algorithm, that at any stage can estimate prior and posterior probabilities with a known error bound. It is shown how well it works for systems that have normality conditions that dominate the probabilities, as is the case in many diagnostic situations where we are diagnosing systems that work most of the time, and for commonsense reasoning tasks where normality assumptions (allegedly) dominate. We give a characterisation of those cases where it works well, and discuss how well it can be expected to work on average. Finally we give a discussion on a range of implementations, and discuss why some promising approaches do not work as well as may be expected.


Automatic monitoring of biodiversity by acoustic sensors has become an indispensable tool to assess environmental stress at an early stage. Due to the difficulty in recognizing the Amazon's high acoustic diversity and the large amounts of raw audio data recorded by the sensors, the labeling and manual inspection of this data is not feasible. Therefore, we propose an ecoacoustic index that allows us to quantify the complexity of an audio segment and correlate this measure with the biodiversity of the soundscape. The approach uses unsupervised methods to avoid the problem of labeling each species individually. The proposed index, named the Ecoacoustic Global Complexity Index (EGCI), makes use of Entropy, Divergence and Statistical Complexity. A distinguishing feature of this index is the mapping of each audio segment, including those of varied lenghts, as a single point in a 2D-plane, supporting us in understanding the ecoacoustic dynamics of the rainforest. The main results show a regularity in the ecoacoustic richness of a floodplain, considering different temporal granularities, be it between hours of the day or between consecutive days of the monitoring program. We observed that this regularity does a good job of characterizing the soundscape of the environmental protection area of Mamirauá, in the Amazon, differentiating between species richness and environmental phenomena.